80 Responses to Fr. Z with a question: G-Mail

Love Gmail. You can leave messages in a conversation instead of
having 25 separate responses for replies. You don’t have to move messages
to folders- you “label” them and archive them. You can find archived messages
with a Google search box. Nice layout, reliable access. Best free email
available, in my opinion.

I recommend gMail. It’s fast and reliable. One of gMail’s quirks is that it uses “Labels” instead of folders.

However, it supports IMAP (which is rare) and POP for standalone client access (like Outlook).

Another great thing about gMail is that you can configure a subdomain and mx domain to point to Google. So, as an example, you could have frz@wdtprs.com and webmail.wdtprs.com running on Google servers. This configuration frees your host from apportioning bandwidth to e-mail.

Gmail is great. It gives you almost unlimited storage space. You never delete a message, because you can retrieve any message you’ve received or sent using the Google search engine. It has client software for mobile phones and blackberries. And gmail just keeps getting better, since Google seem to add features almost weekly. Its spam filter is better than the one on our corporate e-mail system. It does push ads on you, but they are unobtrusive.

Best of all, I have found it entirely reliable — it’s almost never out of service.

Gmail could be attractive because of good storage space of around 6Gb, the other good thing about it is a decent anti-spam protection. Once something is deleted as a spam-type email, the same or similar type of message will never get through to your inbox again, but instead it is placed into spam box, where you can viewed it or delete it manually. But maybe it is nothing special about it anyway.

Gmail is fabulous. Far better than Yahoo. The conversation threading is excellent, and the spam filter is flawless. I make heavy use of labels and input filters, and have several gmail accounts, for different purposes, that all feed into a single account (responses come from the original account). I also use gCalendar, and I have RSS feeds from many blogs, including yours, set up on gReader. Highly recommended.

Yes, get gmail. Other services are also free and work fine. But gmail, aside from just being generally cheery and enjoyable, makes it superbly easy to search your inbox for old messages – it’s done just like a google search-, hold lots and lots of old messages (so you have them to search through), and groups them for ease of reference when it’s the 3rd, 4th, 25th email in a chain (which gmail terms “conversations”).

I’d rather have all Masses prayed faithfully versus Deum with the faithful receiving communion kneeling at the rail. But for today only, I’d settle for you making the switch to gmail.

Gmail fits in the category of “greatest inventions in all mankind.” It takes a little getting used to, but the search functionality works like a dream, meaning you rarely have to delete email (especially considering the 6gigs of space they give you, which is constantly growing).

The other benefit is that you’re working with a Google product. It’s always going to be improved down the line for the better. They listen to user reviews and suggestions, and often if you think of an idea that would improve Gmail — Google’s already working on it.

I like to think of it this way: there are good signs that Google is taking over the world, and for now… that’s all right with me : )

Great anti-spam features;
the “conversation” bundling of messages is handy;
the labels, much like labels for blog posts, are convenient; and
I’ve not experienced any downtime or delays, unlike Hotmail, etc. – important when you’re getting passwords sent back to you in the midst of a commercial transaction.

Gmail is great, like just about all of Google’s software and services. I highly recommend it, I now use it and .Mac mail exclusively, particularly as both work well across multiple platforms due to using IMAP, so my mail accounts are synched regardless if I read them from home, laptop, or iPhone.

I’ve configured my family’s domain to use gMail. The spam filter is simply fantastic, no worries. The threaded conversations are indispensable as well. For Firefox users who happen to dislike text ads, installing and configuring the CustomizeGoogle plugin will eliminate most marketing copy from the interface.

I use gmail as my main email and contacts list for reasons already mentioned. Some other features I like: They do a good job weeding out the spam, you can set up filters to automatically tag emails, and color-code those tags. You can format your message with hyperlinks, color, and hilighting, spell check (I never use, should I?), save drafts. I don’t know if you get the same for a new account, but I think I started with about 2 gigs of space a few years ago and now have about 6 gigs. I only use 9% of that and rarely use the delete button even though I get many newsletters and other mail. The tagging and archiving took a little getting used to, but I like it now. If you can remember some unique phrase in an email you’re looking for, gmail will find it quickly.

Gmail is definitely the best email client out there, it just takes a little getting used to. Their spam filter is by far the best, hands down.

I set up all my email accounts (work, school, my old account) to forward all messages to Gmail and skip the inbox of that account. That way all my accounts send their mail to my one Gmail account, and I don’t have to waste all my time checking 5 different email addresses.

The search engine for Gmail is far superior to any other email site’s search, and it has virtually unlimited storage too (they increase the amount every day, it’s over 6Gb right now).

I’ve been using gmail almost as long as there has been a gmail, and I love it. The labels take some getting used to, but I can use multiple labels on one email and easily be able to find it. Also, the grouping of email as a “conversation” is helpful. As long as the subject isn’t changed, the emails will all be grouped together.

Thanks for the tip on the Firefox plugin Aristotle. I hope advertisers aren’t paying much for those ads — I hardly ever notice them. I do vaguely remember clicking on one one time though. Must’ve been a nervous twitch in my wrist or something.

Gmail es great, you can organize your e-mails much better than yahoo or hotmail. Gmail currently offers 6328 MB of free storage. I’ve got two Gmail’s accounts, the oldest one was in the time of beta’s Gmail and now it has 15360 MB of free storage.

As others have stated, yes, Google will host your own domain for email. Just check out http://www.google.com/a (Google Apps) and you can set it up for free. I use Google Apps for my own personal domain (www.ordronneau.com) and have ordronneau.com emails for the whole family.

G-Mail is my main e-mail program. To me it’s the best one I have ever used in my 10 years of Internet. Some of the features I love is being able to receive mail from other providers like AOL or MSN, so that I get all my mail in one spot. Another is being able to post items, with pictures, to my Blogs. That saves me lots of time. The span filter is really great, I almost never get vulgar spam in my In-box. The best thing for me is that it’s all stored on the Google Server and not on my computer, hogging up room on the hard-drive. Google-Talk is also tied in to the program so that I can chat with my friends in the favorites list and do my mail at the same time. Get it, you won’t be sorry!

Gmail can download any email service that is POP3. Just go to “Settings” and input your account info. If you use Google Apps, and you own your own domain, you can point your MX Record directly to Google’s servers and off of your current provider.

I use gmail, and I am of two minds about it. I actually rather liked having folders, but now they have made the labels color-coded (and since you can set up rules to automatically label incoming mail from anticipated senders), it works pretty well. My main beef with it is that you cannot open different areas of the interface in multiple tabs or windows. E.g., I can’t go to compose a message, and then mid-composition right click the inbox link and open it in another tab so I can check the content of a previous message. I have to save what I’m writing as a draft and go all over to the inbox — I don’t know why the links aren’t right-clickable. Other than that, I love it, although I know people who have had problems with it interfacing with other servers in limited circumstances (there was a time last year at my undergrad institution where it wouldn’t send or receive emails to/from our school email server).

When my printer broke a couple of years ago, since I don’t print that many items, I decided to not get a new one. $35 for an ounce or two of ink is outrageous. I do my printing at the public library for five cents a page.

All I do is send my document to my gmail address, drive over to the library, open my gmail account on their computer, do my printing, then walk over to the newspaper/magazine area and catch up on other reading and then browse the new book area for interesting subjects.

I would drop my “main” account except that over the years I have posted my address in so many genealogical websites (most of which I have forgotten) that I prefer to regularly monitor it. So I have to pay $12 a month to keep it open. I forward all my gmail to my “main” account.

Absolutely go with GMail. The interface and all that is great, but the best parts are the conversations and spam protection. I get maybe 1 spam through to my inbox a week (if not longer than that) and I have NEVER had a real email marked as spam. My Yahoo and Hotmail were terrible about this.

@ different Paul, you actually can open different areas of the interface in multiple tabs or windows.. one option is holding shift when you click on compose, another option is just open gmail several times (in tabs or windows) and use one tab to write and another to read a mail.

Besides googlechat (which now also works in safari) there’s also AIM integrated, much more useful for those in the states than for me… the only thing i don’t like is that you can’t be invisible, but we can’t be in real life either.

It also has funny little things like playing mp3’s that are in the attachment right in your browser, you can open text documents in the linked GoogleDocs which handles text document, excel files and powerpoint presentations, you can even see attached powerpoint presentations direct in your browser (very useful when you’re on holiday in Africa and no powerpoint-program is installed). GoogleDocs makes you leave your flash disk at home. I’d say make a Gmail tour; http://www.google.com/mail/help/tour/start.html
b blcd

First option: you can set up your own GMail account (ex. wdtprs@gmail.com). GMail can then be set up to collect mail from your hosting company. So mail still goes through your host, and it gobbles up bandwidth and space. This requires that your primary e-mail host allow POP access.

Second, you can set up GMail to be your e-mail host. Mail goes to Google directly without gobbling up bandwidth or space from your web host. You still keep your website, and all @wdtprs.com mail goes to GMail. You don’t have to deal with @gmail.com addresses, since your addresses will be @wdtprs.com or whatever domain you choose.

It did take me a while to get use to gmail. But, after getting used to it, I prefer it to other mail programs.

I have GMail receiving my Yahoo mail, mail from an IMAP account (MS Exchange), and I imported all of my old mail from Outlook and Thunderbird to gmail. I now have 6 years of email in it, even though I have been using it only for 6 months.

The free POP support mentioned above is huge. At last check, this wasn’t available to nonpaying hotmail accounts.

I use my tried-and-true Eudora as a standalone e-mail client. When I opened my gmail account, I immediately activated the POP and set up Eudora to retrieve the messages. I haven’t logged in to the gmail.com site since.

Though, if you read mail on more than one computer (e.g. desktop, laptop, blackberry), normally you can only download a given message once. In other words, if you download a message to Outlook on your laptop, it won’t show up on your desktop Outlook later on.

A nifty trick to get around this is to change your account username on each computer’s standalone client from “xyz.gmail.com” to “recent:xyz@gmail.com”. Doing so will allow you to download each e-mail once on as many individual computers as you like.

Now that I’ve changed my primary address from Comcast to Gmail, I’m no longer chained to Comcast for life. That fact alone has made me a huge gmail fan.

Gmail has a huge amount of free storage, and it increases all the time. When I started (if I remember right) it was something like 2GB, and now it’s over 6GB. This is way, way more than my free e-mail account that comes with my cable Internet service.

For iPhone users, Google’s gmail has just changed. There is now IMAP support for Google accounts by default on the iPhone – which makes a BIG difference. Many people use the default gmail perogative which is basically – leave everything you EVER get in your account and don’t worry about space, since we, Google, give it to you for free, index it and let you search it easily, and , um, did I say the big draw is it’s free. Well, ok, that’s true, but some other people think it’s wasteful, inefficient and downright wrong to leave everything “live” and available in your mailbox – some would say, untidy. Now back to the IMAP feature – When you delete a message from your iPhone, or IMAP-compliant email client (if you’re not using the google web interface), it deletes it off the server. So there’s a server-side action triggered by iPhone actions. All this assumes you upgrade the iPhone to firmware version 1.1.3, which is what was just released by Apple, Inc and Steve Jobs on Tuesday at Macworld SF.
I thought people would want to know this – since there are now 4 Million people walking around with iPhones – and with those numbers there must be readers out there with this device – and likely gmailer too.
For myself, I have 3 gmail accounts on the iPhone and it works flawlessly.

There’s a much better way to do it than simply having Gmail use POP3 to download mail. It involves (1) Importing all mail from other accounts into Gmail AND (2) set up all old accounts to “Forward all messages and delete from Inbox to: your-gmail-account. This will make all your emails simply go right from them to Gmail, as though they had originally been sent to Gmail.

2). Setup your old email address in the same email client using either POP3 or IMAP (doesn’t matter)

3). Select all your old messages and copy them all to your Gmail Inbox.

Voila! It’s as though you’ve been using Gmail all along! AND you don’t have to wait for Gmail to check your POP3 account every 30min or so (Outlook and Thunderbird do it once every minute or two) You can do this with multiple email accounts if you want, no problem.

Actually, if your current provider supports POP3, I’d use that to download the messages (see Arieh’s comment above) AFTER you set up Email Forwarding with them. But to copy over all your outgoing mail you might need to do the steps I outlined in the previous post.

Well, it depends on how your email account is currently set up. There is no “Google application” unless you are referring to what you can do with your web browser.

Probably the easiest way to move your mail, though, as I was describing earlier, is to set up your old account and your Gmail account using Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook (I would suggest Thunderbird unless you are more familiar with Outlook). Then, simply select all of your messages, and click and drag them over to the Inbox on your Gmail account. This is definitely the easiest way if you already use an email client (as in, you get your email somewhere other than your browser).

However, if your email provider uses POP3 (it probably does, most do), you can simply login to your Gmail account, and under Settings => Accounts you can tell it to “Get mail from other accounts.” The directions there are pretty straightforward, and it just downloads all the email off of your old account.

I would agree with all the posts above except that I’ve been having several problems with Gmail since I upgraded to the Leopard OS. I’m not ready to blame them on gmail yet, but they are many and quite annoying!

Are you asking if Gmail can check other email accounts using IMAP? If so, no. Every email account that Gmail checks must be fetched via POP3. You can still set up Gmail as IMAP and use a separate email client to view your emails (even the ones that Gmail fetches from other POP3 email accounts) if you don’t want to use your browser to view your emails.

What I do, instead of worrying about fetching email via POP3, is to change the DNS settings for my domain’s MX Record to point to Google’s mail servers. Since you own the domain wdtprs.com and your email is at that domain too, changing the MX Record to point to Google’s mail servers would be the best solution.

I have gmail and Yahoo. I like the Yahoo interface better for managing email, and it has unlimited pace. The problem with Yahoo is all of the graphic ads, some unfortunately not very modest, which can be real tiring. So yahoo is thumbs up on technology, gmail is thumbs up on no picture ads.

Another point that I haven’t seen above is that you can virtually create infinite email addresses off of one address. Here’s what I mean:

Say your email address is wdtprs@gmail.com. Now when you give your email to somebody, say amazon.com, you can use a “+” to create a unique email address that they will use to send to you: wdtprs+amazon@gmail.com.

When an email gets sent to gmail’s servers it ignores everything after the “+” so it still is directed to wdtprs@gmail.com.

Now the useful part for me is that you can now set up filters that work 100% of the time. You can have everything that was sent TO “wdtprs+amazon@gmail.com” automatically tagged with “Amazon” and even have it skip the inbox if you wish (or any number of actions). Another nice thing is that if anybody sells your email address, you could tell because it would have their name after the plus. One downside to this is that I have come across a few sites that don’t let you put the “+” in the email address even though it is 100% valid.

Also, I love the keyboard shortcuts and if you are a Firefox user, there is a great extension called “Better GMail 2” that adds a bunch of nice functionality.

I have two gmail accounts and each has over 6 gb of free storage and more is added each day. Two things I don’t like about it 1) it automatically adds email addresses to my contacts list, let me decide who I want to add, 2) it automatically saves all my sent mail, I don’t want to save all my sent mail. that is like saving a copy of every piece of physical mail that I mail

I hate to disagree, but I hate g-mail. I got an account, but for some reason I get redirected everytime I go to the webmail login page, back to the main google page. If you have a google ID that is not linked to your g-mail you will never, it seems, be allowed to log on to gmail.

Fr Z,
You can’t go wrong with gmail. The anti-smap along is worth it. I have only found 1 erroneously classified mail after three years of using gmail. The one letter shortcuts are a big time saver as well (hit ‘c’ and a new message opens up). Addressing a message is a breeze since it starts to guess by either name or email account. Gmail is awesome!

When I got my first Gmail account, I kept my hotmail for a while “just in case I needed it”. After 6 months I realized I hadn’t used the hotmail account for anything except Messenger (for which you don’t actually need a hotmail) and receiving tons of spam. I trashed the hotmail account and have never missed it. The fact that you have to have a *microsoft* program to get your mail to read your messages via a 3rd party app is also a monopoly behavior that I just can’t stand. And, as has been said: name anything that hotmail’s got that Gmail doesn’t…

1. Email, by it’s very nature — non-encrypted plain text relay — is insecure. Google is no different in this regard.

2. Why the concern that Google keeps your email even if you delete it from your box? So do Hotmail and Yahoo and every other free email provider (that’s part of how they make money: build a marketing profile on you and sell targeted ads… this isn’t rocket science).

3. To say that “Gmail is spyware” demonstrates a gross conceptual misunderstanding of what spyware is. I think you meant to complain about Google wanting to index everyone’s data. Newsflash: “The Agency” already has full archives of all the email you’ve ever sent. Privacy was dead ten years ago… you only now noticed?

Specifically in favor of Gmail:

1. Labels are superior to folders: they are logical groupings as opposed to physical groupings. Emails frequently belong in multiple logical categories; this is easily accomplished with labels… much more cumbersome — if possible at all — with simple folders.

2. NO GRAPHICAL ADS! This alone should make it the best free email service for all men. Who needs to be seeing mostly-undressed women in their browsers when they are checking their inbox? All the free email services build the marketing profiles and target ads… Google has the decency to stick to text-only ads.

3. Flexibility. My gmail account received email forwarded from about a dozen domains, including my work email account, and allows me to respond to those emails with the correct email address for each domain. As also asked above, Gmail will auto-fetch email from other POP accounts I might have (they don’t auto-fetch IMAP accounts yet… I think). Bottom line: 20+ email accounts and one inbox to monitor them all.

4. Storage space: my account is currently at 6300+ MB and counting… even with 20+ email account dumping into my Gmail account I am nowhere close to the limit.

Search Fr. Z’s Blog

Search for:

SHOPPING ONLINE? Please, always come here first!

Enter Amazon through my link, the image below (they took away our search box!), and I will get a small percentage of what you spend. (Pssst - Can't see it? Turn off your "ad-blocker" for this site!)

“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z

YOUR RECENT COMMENTS

Ave Crux: Bishop Serratelli , of the Paterson Diocese in NJ, also asks each year that all the parishes in the diocese schedule Confession s on Monday of each week during Lent in addition to their...

Paypal Donation

Let us pray…

Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
be in no wise troubled by attack from her
foes.
O God, who by sin art offended and by
penance pacified, mercifully regard the
prayers of Thy people making supplication
unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of
Thine anger which we deserve for our sins.
Almighty and Everlasting God, in
whose Hand are the power and the
government of every realm: look down upon
and help the Christian people that the heathen
nations who trust in the fierceness of their
own might may be crushed by the power of
thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world
without end. R. Amen.

My "challenge coin" for my 25th anniversary of ordination in 2016.

Want one? I do exchanges with military and LEOs, etc. and you can make a donation.

To set up a recurring, monthly donation via PAYPAL (even a small one) go to the bottom of this blog and look for the drop down menu! Do you want yet another alternative to PayPal? I have set up an account with
CONTINUE TO GIVE
Get a link to donate via CONTINUE TO GIVE using your smart phone.
SEND MESSAGE:
4827563
TO:
715-803-4772
They take a larger percent taste, but they are an alternative.

I remember benefactors in my prayers and periodically say Mass for your intention.

This catechism helped to bring Fr. Z into the Catholic Church!

Be a “Zed-Head”!

Fathers, you don’t know who might show up! It could be a “big fish” of one sort or other…

And... GO TO CONFESSION!

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

What people say about Fr. Z

"Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger who has never shied from picking fights with priests, bishops or cardinals when liturgical abuses are concerned."
- Kractivism

"Father John Zuhlsdorf is a crank" "Father Zuhlsdorf drives me crazy" "the hate-filled Father John Zuhlsford" [sic]"Father John Zuhlsdorf, the right wing priest who has a penchant for referring to NCR as the 'fishwrap'"
- Michael Sean Winters

"Fr Z is a true phenomenon of the information age: a power blogger and a priest."
- Anna Arco

“Given that Rorate Coeli and Shea are mad at Fr. Z, I think it proves Fr. Z knows what he is doing and he is right.”
- Comment

"Let me be clear. Fr. Z is a shock jock, mostly. His readership is vast and touchy. They like to be provoked and react with speed and fury."
- Sam Rocha

"Father Z’s Blog is a bright star on a cloudy night."
- Comment

"A cross between Kung Fu Panda and Wolverine."
- Anonymous

Fr. Z is officially a hybrid of Gandalf and Obi-Wan XD
- Comment

Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a scrappy blogger popular with the Catholic right.
- America Magazine

RC integralist who prays like an evangelical fundamentalist.
-Austen Ivereigh on Twitter

“For me the saddest thing about Father Z’s blog is how cruel it is.... It’s astonishing to me that a priest could traffic in such cruelty and hatred.”
- Jesuit homosexualist James Martin to BuzzFeed

Fr. Z's is one of the more cheerful blogs out there and he is careful about keeping the crazies out of his commboxes
- Paul in comment at 1 Peter 5

I am a Roman Catholic, in no small part, because of your blog.
I am a TLM-going Catholic, in no small part, because of your blog.
And I am in a state of grace today, in no small part, because of your blog.
- Tom in comment

More stuff…

Archives

ENTRY CALENDAR

Do you use my blog often? Is it helpful to you?

If so, please consider subscribing to send a monthly donation. That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically say Holy Mass.

Some options

Admin Stuff

The opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect the positions of any of the Catholic Church's entities with which I am involved. They are my own. Opinions expressed by commentators in the comments belong to the commentators.